All four Asian Tigers have a lot of people who are very educated and good at their jobs. They also did different things, and tried to do them better than other countries. For example, Hong Kong and Singapore became very good at international finance, while South Korea and Taiwan became very good at information technology.

The four tigers grew richer very quickly. Some of this was because these countries let companies compete more, and some of this was because they started to sell more to other countries. The United States helped during the Cold War, because they didn't want these countries to become communist.

All the Asian Tigers tried to export (sell) things to rich industrialized nations. They grew rich very quickly (they had double-digit economic growth) for decades. Each nation was not a democracy, and people were not very free in the early years. All of these countries later became freer, and people now think Taiwan and Korea are liberal democracies[4]

In 1997, people started to invest (spend) money on things they shouldn't, and that hurt the economies of those countries. But now these countries are getting richer again.[5]